


Café

by Heart_Seoul_Soshi



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 07:31:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14786150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heart_Seoul_Soshi/pseuds/Heart_Seoul_Soshi
Summary: “Mal, come on. You know my eyes are brown,” Evie quietly said.Evie was Mal’s best friend. Of course she knew her eyes were brown. But they weren’t just brown.





	Café

**Author's Note:**

> from an anonymous request on tumblr

You knew everything about a best friend. That’s sort of what made them the best, right? You knew them the best, liked them the best, trusted them the best, cared for them the best. Evie was Mal’s best.   
  
Mal knew that Evie hummed to herself as she draped and pinned clothing designs to her mannequin, when her concentration was its deepest as she took her steps back and studied how the outfit hung, where it fell. Mal knew that Evie slept on her back but curled up on her side at first to help herself drift off, that balling herself tight and snuggling into a soft Auradon pillow brought on sleep when she needed it most before she drowsily rolled onto her back and let it overtake her. Mal knew that when Evie could afford it, she would get up extra early, in time to stand at the dorm room window and watch the sunrise, watch the dark campus grounds be painted with light as the sky was painted with a perfect pallet of colors.  
  
And Mal knew that Evie was her best subject. Her smile did strange things to Mal’s cold heart, things that made it feel full of warmth, and she tried her best to capture that smile in quick sketches when she could. Paper after paper and sketchbook after sketchbook were littered with Mal’s drawings of Evie. Evie didn’t always have time to sit and pose, but she happily obliged Mal when she could, beyond flattered that her best friend’s talented eye was drawn to her again and again.  
  
“…M?”  
  
Evie stood over Mal one day, peering curiously over her shoulder as the girl sat at the desk with a nearly-full sketchbook.  
  
“Hm?” was Mal’s distracted answer, drawing the last feather-light strands of Evie’s hair from memory.  
  
“You never color any of your drawings,” Evie noted.  
  
It was true. Mal often left her work in pencil, sometimes with occasional inking, but rarely if ever would she commit a piece to color. She had all the means to, tucked neatly under her bed—acrylics, and watercolors, pastels and colored pencils, markers and oil paints. They, for the most part, sat untouched.  
  
“I don’t have the time.”  
  
It was Mal’s default answer. Much quicker and easier than saying her talent with coloring was lacking, that she’d seen piece after perfect piece ruined by her attempts to add a little color, that an artist’s talented work turned into little more than a page from a children’s coloring book when she made the attempt to utilize those acrylics and watercolors and pastels and markers.  
  
“But don’t you think I’d be the perfect thing to color?” Evie went on with a proud smile. “Blue hair, ruby lips, peach skin?”  
  
“Yeah E, you would, but…”  
  
Mal trailed off, suddenly extra focused on the sketchbook before her.  
  
“But what?” Evie tilted a confused head.  
  
“…I’m not that good at coloring, okay?” Mal let her pencil drop defeatedly from her hand.  
  
“What? Since when?”  
  
“Since, like… _ever,”_ Mal answered, exasperated at having to admit it out loud.  
  
Evie circled the chair, coming around beside Mal to look at her face to face.  
  
“Mal, come on,” she laughed lightheartedly. “I’ve seen some of the things you’ve colored. I’ve seen the paintings you’ve done for art class.”  
  
Ugh, school assigned art. Don’t even get Mal started.  
  
“Yeah, well, you don’t see it the way I see it,” Mal grumbled, casting her eyes to the side.  
  
“I’m an artist too,” Evie gently reminded her. “I know what I’m looking at. Would you do it for me? Just one drawing, and you and I are the only ones who will ever see it.”  
  
The downside of best friends? They were infuriatingly hard to say “no” to. Especially best friends as soft and sweet as Evie. Mal didn’t verbally agree, but her little sigh and the way she stood from the chair to go retrieve her colored pencils was agreement enough. Evie went through the sketchbook in the meantime, thinking Mal would choose an old drawing and fill in the blanks from there. But no, Mal had other ideas, having Evie sit on her own bed while Mal sat across from her with a brand new page opened in her sketchbook.  
  
“Alright E, you know the drill. Just sit still for a little bit.”  
  
Evie held her head proud and high the entire time Mal’s pencil scratched and scrawled across the paper, a small smile naturally settling in place on her lips. She was used to it, used to the sitting still of being Mal’s muse, and time passed easily. Mal showed she was done by flipping her sketchbook out to Evie, letting her see her own masterfully drawn face, shining eyes and all.   
  
“It’s beautiful,” Evie beamed.  
  
“You’re beautiful,” the words tumbled free from Mal’s lips without even asking her permission.  
  
Evie took the compliment in stride.  
  
“And don’t you think I’ll be even more beautiful in color?” a coy, teasing tilt of the lips asked the question.  
  
“I think we’re all in trouble if you get anymore beautiful,” Mal chuckled, rising to her feet and taking the sketchbook with her as she returned to the desk.  
  
Evie followed, pulling up another chair and scooting in close to Mal. Anyone else would’ve had Mal furious, flying into an irritated rage as she barked orders for them to back up, back off, and demanded not to be watched while she worked. But Evie? Evie sitting beside her with her head in her hand and her eyes tracing every glide of Mal’s colored pencil or grind of an eraser? Mal didn’t mind it in the slightest. She’d secretly glance over at Evie every now and then, seeing how mesmerized she was with the way Mal laid down colors and blended them, and the way her image came to life in vivid shades and hues as the minutes passed.  
  
The hair on the page was no longer curves and waves of graphite, but a pool of sapphire, marine, cerulean. Mal didn’t once look at Evie for reference as she colored, knowing where each and every tint and value went off the top of her head. Her skin and lips came alive on the page as well when Mal traced apple red across the full shape of the lips and touched it here and there with pinks. Mal saved the eyes for last, the only two blank spaces on Evie’s captivating face.  
  
She beat Mal to it, reaching into her tin of colored pencils and handing her one. Mal’s face furrowed as she turned it between her fingers, the fine gold lettering etched into the side quietly naming the color— “brown”.  
  
“E, what are you doing? Your eyes aren’t brown,” Mal said.  
  
“Yes they are, what are you talking about? You know that, Mal. The plainest, most common eye color in the world,” Evie laughed her off.  
  
Plain. Common. Evie wouldn’t even admit to herself that the dull brown was part of the reason she always made sure her lashes were dark with mascara, her lids ghosted with shadow, the hooded shape of her eyes touched with eyeliner.  
  
Mal paid the colored pencil in her hand no mind, dropping it to the table and turning in her chair to meet Evie’s eyes. It was a little sudden, the way Mal was so deeply and intimately focused on her, and Evie couldn’t help but turn her head away shyly.  
  
“Mal, come on. You know my eyes are brown,” she quietly said.  
  
Evie was Mal’s best friend. Of course she knew her eyes were brown. But they weren’t  _just_  brown.  
  
Mal tucked her fingers under Evie’s chin, turning her gaze back towards her. And she leaned in close, the two just inches away. Mal’s own eyes were aglow with the light of an artist studying a masterpiece.  
  
“I don’t see plain, common brown,” Mal began. “I see…chocolate. Warm, and rich, and mixed with little drips of honey. Chocolate and honey. Things I knew on The Isle in your eyes way before I ever knew them in Auradon.”  
  
Evie’s breath caught in her chest. But Mal wasn’t even done.  
  
“And let’s see…they’re butterscotch,” she said assuredly.  
  
Evie giggled.  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous, butterscotch is a yellow color. My eyes aren’t yellow, M.”  
  
“But yellow is the color of happiness. And your eyes are happy, E.”  
  
“…Very happy,” Evie admitted with pink cheeks. “What else are they?”  
  
Mal gazed even deeper, leaned even closer. This time, Evie wouldn’t look away. She couldn’t.  
  
“Brown like acorns,” Mal added after a minute. “Something so small yet full of life. An entire force of nature hidden inside, just waiting to bloom.”  
  
“M…”  
  
“Iced tea, cool and sweet. Refreshing. Your eyes are smoky quartz, Evie. The seven dwarves would be lucky to dig up gemstones half as glittering as the ones right here in your eyes. They’re powerful, with the strength of the earth, like all the rich soil that grows the green in  _my_  eyes.”  
  
In Mal’s eyes. Smoky quartz met jade as two best friends sat face to face, so lost in each other.  
  
“It’s kind of fitting, if you think about it,” Mal smiled. “Your eyes are the earth, and mine are the swaying plants and tall trees that call it home. The same way you’re my home, E. The one that helped me grow, and keeps me grounded to this very day.”  
  
“Mal, I…”  
  
Never knew that Mal’s artistry went beyond the pages of a sketchbook or the lines of a pencil. Never knew that Mal could be an artist with her very words, her very feelings.  
  
“…So no, I don’t think ‘brown’ is going to cut it,” Mal tore herself away from the real world’s Evie, looking back over the Evie smiling up at her from the sketchbook. “I don’t think I have a single color perfect enough to do the job, actually.”  
  
“…No?” Evie breathed.  
  
“No. I might just have to leave it…unfinished…”  
  
Mal forgot her words when Evie came back to her, half-lidded eyes of chocolate, iced tea, and earthen life now studying  _her._ And Mal suddenly found herself concentrating intently on other colors.  
  
Apple red across the full shape of lips, touched here and there with pinks.  
  
“I think you did an amazing job coloring, even if you might not. It really is beautiful, Mal,” Evie’s fingertips lightly ran over the paper of the sketchbook.  
  
“…You’re beautiful,” Mal again insisted, the two words once more spilling out of their own accord.   
  
“And you’re the reason I know I really am. Not my mother teaching me to cover myself in makeup until I am, not me staring into mirrors until I convince myself I am…but you, looking into the same eyes that over half the people on the planet have and making me feel like mine outshine all of theirs.”  
  
And of course, Mal knew they did. Mal knew that Evie’s eyes, her smile, her  _everything_ outshone that of everyone else. She was her best friend, Mal knew everything there was to know about her. She was a girl who knew her Evie, and an artist who knew her colors. Red and blue made purple. Yellow and blue made green.  
  
And apple red lips pressed softly and gratefully to a cheek of ivory skin made bright, burning rouge all across Mal’s face, a hot and deep blush painting her features while a similar one claimed Evie. All the while Evie’s eyes glittered, that smoky quartz dancing in the light and glowing with the fire from her cheeks.  
  
“You, u-um…you don’t mind the picture left unfinished?” Mal asked, finding her words again.  
  
“I don’t mind,” Evie quietly told her.  
  
Just as long as they didn’t go unfinished.  
  
And Mal knew Evie. She knew the smile that did things to her cold, guarded heart. She knew Evie’s eyes, and the way the smile touched them. And she knew Evie, full of warmth and love that she was always ready to give.  
  
Unfinished. That was the one thing Mal and Evie would never be.


End file.
